The present invention generally relates to the field of fast multimedia browsing. It particularly refers to different implementations of a video preview system.
Nowadays, the emergence of high volume multimedia archives has shown a clear need for an efficient content-specific multimedia browsing technology providing means for extracting relevant information. To avoid information overload, a browsing system needs to preselect shots of information from a database in a user-adequate manner. Additionally, such a browsing system should be able to support continuous presentation of time-dependent media. Users of browsing applications often have vague information needs which can only be described in conceptual terms. Additionally, a general browsing system must offer mechanisms for interactive inspection of the presented information following a user's instructions.